Design, Construction and Testing of a Weighing Equipment for Powdered Food Products

Abstract

In local markets in third world countries, no standards are followed in terms of selling and buying powdered food products. This leads to variation in the amount of products sold or received by retailers or customers respectively. Ensuring a standard for such products are vital in maximizing profit for business owners and optimizing quantity of products received by customers. To solve this problem, a weighing equipment was designed, constructed, and tested. All materials used in the construction were locally sourced and assembled. After completion of the weighing equipment, it was tested with a powder product for about 300 s (at 60 s interval) and the corresponding mass (kg) was compared to a readily available digital scale. The results from the analysis showed that the developed weighing equipment have an approximate accuracy of about 95%. This meant that the average mass (kg) difference from the analysis was 5.06%. In addition, there was an average savings of about 0.150 kg of the powder product. Therefore, the developed weighing equipment will be vital to small scale businesses in third world countries.